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SLOC getting high environmental marks
By Peter Thunell
Deseret News staff writer
In 1994, the International Olympic Committee added "environment" to sport and culture to comprise the three major tenants of the Olympic Games.
Friday night, that dedication to the environment was made even more evident when environmentalist Jean-Michel Cousteau carried the Olympic flag into the Rice-Eccles Stadium during the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Games.
"I felt very honored to represent the environment. Every step I made on stage yesterday was humbling," Cousteau, the son of famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, said Saturday at a press briefing.
The briefing on the environmental programs of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee touted efforts to produce an environmentally sound Games.
Officials also said Salt Lake had been declared by an independent consultant to be the "greenest Games" ever.
Diane Gleason, SLOC's environment program director, said a recent audit by environmental consultant CH2MHILL, indicated that Salt Lake has gone beyond compliance in all of the environmental standards they tested.
"We've done very well so far," Gleason said. "Most of our hard work is behind us."
The three major goals Gleason said they set out to accomplish when they first began planning were zero emissions, zero waste and planting more urban forestry.
Due to the increased use of mass transit during the Games and the thousands of trees they have planted, Gleason predicts that Salt Lake will have cleaner air during the Games than it normally does. This also happened in Los Angeles and Atlanta during their Games.
For waste recycling, trash from the Olympic venues will be taken to the Materials Recovery Facility, which will sort out what can be recycled and helping put the rest with materials so that it can be turned into compost.
With the urban forestry project, the program has planted more than 100,000 trees in Utah and more than 17 million around the world.
Beyond achieving their goals, some of the major accomplishments SLOC's environmental program lists are aquatic habitat restoration at Decker Lake and at Soldier Hollow, and increased environmental education with the help of PBS personality Bill Nye the Science Guy.
E-MAIL: pthunell@desnews.com
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February 11, 2002
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